Have we lost the plot on privacy? New site shows empty homes ripe for robbing!

Last updated on March 13th, 2021

Yes it really does seem that we’ve lost the plot as far as privacy goes. I’m not just talking about security breaches at companies, or government personnel losing sensitive information…. I’m talking about you and I sharing far more data than ever we surely should.

I’ve not been a huge fan personally of the massive fashion of social networking, and obsessive Twitter type behaviour, and a new site hitting the news at the moment just goes to underline my concerns.

The site is pleaserobme.com … and yes, it very simply uses a Twitter API to capture a list of people using Twitter and foursquare, and who are declaring themselves to be away from home at the moment. The result is a list of addresses that are currently ripe for a robbing! A scary use of the geo-location information that social networking sites just love us to share.

I’m glad to say from my own perspective that I’m not on Twitter or FourSquare, and even those close to me have no idea whether or not I’m at home or not, until they ring and find out… and frankly, I prefer to keep it that way!

So being serious for just one moment, we do seriously need to take a look at our activities these days, particularly on the Internet, and realise that we all share a lot of information online. The important question is, of course, whether the information we provide can be pieced together to provide more information than we would wish to provide.

Thanks to the guys behind pleaserobme.com, the general public maybe getting a slightly rude awakening to the consquences of social networking habits. Time will of course tell as to whether this site changes habits or simply provides a few minutes comedy for people.